


Smile, It's the End of the World

by Bluehaven4220



Category: due South
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, Hospitals, Male-Female Friendship, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-05-24 19:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6164392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluehaven4220/pseuds/Bluehaven4220
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the midst of the Second World War, Nurse Lennox loses everything - until she finds Ray and Ben, two injured men from different sides of the conflict, who each, in their own way, remind her that life is worth living.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nurse Lennox, This is Your Life

**Author's Note:**

> All hail ButterflyGhost, the most wonderful beta. I am so lucky to know you and call you my friend.

She never quite knew what she would be in for, whether it was another young man screaming in pain or an old man begging her to do whatever she could to save his son, or changing bed sheets and giving baths, and oftentimes it wasn’t enough.

Try as she might, though, nothing could have prepared her for the telegram that came to her first thing that morning.

REGRET TO INFORM YOU STOP THAT PRIVATE PATRICK LENNOX STOP SHOT DOWN OVER CHANNEL MISSING FEARED DEAD STOP

She dropped the paper, backed up against the wall, slid down, put her head in her hands, and sobbed. It couldn’t be true; it _had_ to be a lie! He’d sworn he’d come back to her.

She’d had a portrait done, tucked it into the front pocket of his uniform herself. He’d given her a ring, married her before he left, promised he’d come home to her and kiss her properly. He’d sworn the second he came home, he’d build her a house and have a family with her; do all the things a husband was supposed to do and love her every day of his life.

No, she wouldn’t believe it. Not until they knew for sure. What if they’d made a mistake and sent the telegram to the wrong Mrs. P. Lennox of Kingston-upon-Hull? There could be thousands of Mrs. P. Lennox’s in Kingston-upon-Hull, couldn’t there? It was, after all, a very common surname,

But that was foolish. A little, niggling voice in the back of her head told her that it was exactly as the telegram said. Except that he wasn’t missing. No, he was dead and it was his _body_ that was missing. He would simply be another British soul lost to the throes of war. She’d seen it a hundred times over and she’d see it a hundred times over again. People _died_ during wars; that was simply the way of it.

But this time, it was different. The young man who’d died; the young man with gorgeous dark hair and kind brown eyes was her _husband._ It was one thing to write to a young soldier’s widow and tell her of her loss, or perhaps hand her his effects after she’d sat with him during his final moments… it was quite another when that dreaded news landed in your own lap.

She sobbed. Unintelligible, garbled words tumbled from her mouth trying to explain what happened to one of the other nurses who came in. She felt someone reach around her shoulders and hold her close, smoothing her hair, rocking her as though she were a child.

It wasn’t until she’d cried herself out and stood up that she’d been able to carry on. Perhaps it was a lofty goal, but she’d do her best, which is all that could be expected from anyone. The head nurse in charge of her unit, Fleming (perhaps a distant relation to Sir Sanford), had heard the commotion, and had come to say she sympathized, but there were still men who needed her help in the hospital at that very moment. The best way to honour her husband, Fleming reasoned, was to care for his brothers-in-arms. Continue the Lord’s work in getting those men well again.

ooOoo

The recently widowed Mrs. P. Lennox brushed imaginary dirt off her knees and stood up, about to answer back and tell her where she could stick the Lord’s work when a young stable hand came barreling through, pleading ignorance at how to treat a ball fall, and would someone come and tend to his friend?

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she followed the farm hand out to the barn. Tripping along the mud and grass, she attempted to get as much information as she could out of the bumbling young man. Apparently, they’d been going about their daily chores when they’d realized they needed another bail of hay for the horses, and he’d fallen.

The rest of the story, she’d not been able to hear as he pulled the stall door open a little further to allow her access and begged her to do something for his friend. The patient was lying immobile, his skin white and and his blond hair merging with the hay. He looked nothing like Patrick, nothing at all - and yet all she could think was 'did my husband look like this when he was dying? Pale and pained and....'

Don't be ridiculous, she told herself. This patient wasn't dying. His pulse was visibly steady in his throat, even if it was rapid. He just needed to be stabilized before further assistance got here.

She took a deep breath and knelt down, very carefully taking the young man’s head and held it firmly in her hands, immobilizing him until the doctor could arrive.

“Now don’t move,” she told him. “You could have broken your back for all I know, and I don’t want to chance that. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” he mumbled, grimacing.

“Good,” she turned toward the other young man who was trembling with fear, wringing his hands. “Go find the doctor! Now!”

Without another word, he took off running.

* * *

There is an old saying that you should never step on a crack else you break your mother’s back. Now, there has never been any truth to said saying, as no one has ever had their break broken by someone stepping on cracks in pavement or sidewalks. Backs have been broken by hard labour, sure, but never by stepping on cracks.

The point of this narrative is not to argue the point of the previously mentioned wives-tale, but how one’s life could change with something so trivial as that. It had certainly never happened to cross her mind, but then again, her mind was otherwise occupied at the moment. She just happened to be on her knees in an old, musty- smelling barn trying to keep a young man’s head from moving. Lucky thing that she was a certified and trained army nurse, but it seemed her talent was wasted. After all, she was stuck in this bloody place in the middle of nowhere for no other reason than nurses were needed to assist in recovery for those who came home shell-shocked, even if the war still wasn’t over.  

What was she thinking? Of course the war was over. It was over for Patrick.

She swallowed the lump in her throat, and focused on breathing calmly, on keeping her patient's head still.

Nursing, and all things associated with nursing, had been her life for the better part of a decade. That being said, it was nursing that had her holding someone immobile while someone else ran for help. As far as she could tell from the story the other farm hand had told her, or garbled at her in his panic, the two of them had been climbing into the hay loft to reach another bale when the one whose head she was holding (she thought his name was Ray or maybe Broderick or something else starting with a B) had put a foot wrong and “hit the ground hard”. Well, that wasn't difficult to see. She’d admonished him for trying to move, placed his head between her knees and sent the other boy, Paul she called him (whether or not that was actually his name she had no idea), for help. That had been well over half an hour ago; how long did it take to run down the road to get the doctor? It wasn’t as though they were _completely_ isolated; there was usually a doctor on site. She couldn’t figure out where the man could have gone when he clearly had nothing else to do.

The silence had resounded throughout the barn was absolutely deafening. The doctor’s whereabouts were not something she could concern herself with when Ray or Broderick or whatever his name was could have a serious head injury.

In an effort to keep him conscious, she bent to look him in the eyes and launched into a plethora of questions.

“What’s your name?”

The boy’s eyes were beginning to flutter.

“Hey!” she slapped his cheek. “Focus on my face. What’s your name?”

“Ray.”

Ha! So she _had_ heard correctly.

“Good. You still know your name,” she stared at him, his grey eyes struggling to keep focused on her. She could see he was starting to lose consciousness. “Hey!” she nearly shouted. “Hey! What year is it?”

“’Is 1943,” he coughed. “’M tired. I just want…”

“No!” she shouted at him. “Ray! Ray, you’re not allowed to sleep!” Despite the volume in her voice, she was not panicking. She’d seen concussions before; this was nothing out of the ordinary as far as concussions were concerned. “Ray, what’s your mother’s name?”

He answered Barbara or Mary, she couldn’t tell which.

“Barbara? Or Mary.”

“Barbara,” he managed, straining to keep his eyes on hers.

“Barbara is a nice name,” she never took her gaze from his. “Ray, tell me about her.”

“She’s my mom.”

“Yes, you said that. Tell me more about her.”

He grunted before sniffling.

“Okay. Now, who’s the President? The Chancellor of Germany?”

“Huh?”

Judging from the sound of his voice, he wasn’t German. There was maybe a trace of American in there, possibly Canadian, but that couldn’t be right, could it? Why would she have asked him the Chancellor of Germany? Why she didn’t ask the name of the current English or Canadian Prime Minister she never knew. Considering they were currently stuck in the middle of Yorkshire, to ask about the Prime Minister would have made a lot more sense.

Staring at his face, she checked that his mouth was clear (she’d noticed that he’d bitten his tongue on the way down). Biting one’s tongue was certainly not life-threatening but really very painful. The biting of the tongue was not what concerned her; it was the fact that he was nearly unconscious that made her slightly nervous. Being slightly nervous was not the same as panicking.

“I’m fine,” he insisted, making an attempt to get up.

“No you’re not,” she answered. “Keep your head still. You might have a concussion.”

“Don’t have one. Let me up.”

“No,” she was dangerously close to slapping him again. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times. If you attempt to move again, I will sit on your chest and stuff your shirt in your mouth,” she stared at him, absolutely convinced he saw her as very strange. Granted, she can’t have looked very appealing in a nurse’s dress covered in sick and her hair a mess from running about all day. Perhaps “strange” wasn’t quite the word she was looking for, but at that point it seemed appropriate.

“Well that’s not very nurse-like, is it?” he chuckled as a cough took him, his eyes pinching shut from the force of it.

That was the trouble with nursing, wasn’t it? A nurse or a doctor were those things no matter where they went. That wasn’t to say that there were days where she silently wished she’d never gone into nursing in the first place. If she’d known she would be away from home as long as she had, she’d never have done so.

“I’m not in the hospital right now. I’ll do what I must to keep you still, “nurse-like” behaviour be damned.”

“But isn’t that the first part of your Hipproctic Oath?” the young man named Ray asked, sniffling.

So he wasn’t as daft as he appeared. He knew _something_ about the medical profession, even if it was only a piece of terminology and incorrect, but it was still something.

“The first part of the Hippo _cratic_ Oath is to do no harm,” she answered, becoming increasingly agitated with him as the wait for the doctor grew exponentially. “There’s no such thing as a Hipproctic Oath…” she took a deep breath to calm herself. “Besides, nurses don’t have to take it.”

“Why not?”

Of course, this must have been absolutely stimulating conversation compared to his mother’s name. She’d not had to slap him awake in quite a few minutes; that was a good sign. What had his question been again? Oh, why didn’t nurses have to take the Oath, right.

The question itself raised a myriad of questions in its place; ones that she was not prepared to answer when she had too many other things to worry about.

“Never mind, I’ll tell you later,” she answered him. “Do you still feel sleepy?”

“No, just… my head hurts something fierce.”

“Yes, that can happen with a fall like that.” _Which is precisely why the doctor should be here now_ , she thought. “Where is that buggering son of a whore?”

She felt Ray jerk his legs, and very quickly realized that she’d said the loud part quietly and the quiet part loudly.

“Oh calm down, I’m sure that’s less than what you hear on a daily basis around here,” Brushing a stray strand of hair from her eyes, she shook her head to clear her thoughts. “Now, which of you idiots decided it was a good idea to climb the hay bales?”

Groaning, he only managed to insist that he wasn’t an idiot, and really quite smart. And where did she get off calling anyone a buggering son of a whatnot?

“I wasn’t referring to you,” she spat, her patience for doctors and anything involving medical care wearing thin. “If you’re as smart as you claim, then it wasn’t the brightest of ideas to be climbing without anyone spotting you, was it?”

“And what do you know about it?” he challenged.

“Enough to know it was a very stupid idea.”

“Takes one to know one.”

She stopped and had to keep herself from snorting. “That’s the best you can come up with? Forgive me if I laugh at your pathetic attempt to insult me by calling me stupid.”

“You’re a bitch,” he attempted to sit up.

“And I’m also the nurse who's been taking care of you and making sure you’re not seriously injured,” she held her grip on his temples and pulled him back to rest his head between her knees once more. “If that quack doesn’t show up soon I’m going to order you to bed. I’ve not eaten in two days and my bladder is fit to burst. Once the doctor checks you over and makes sure my diagnosis is somewhat correct, I’ll leave you to it.”

She heard someone clearing their throat behind her, and, gritting her teeth, rolled her eyes before turning her head.

The elderly gentleman wore a stethoscope around his neck and a white coat, with a medical bag in his right hand.

“Well I don’t see much wrong here. Let him up.”

“Not much wrong? Are you blind, Doctor? I’ve not let him move for the last half hour for fear that he’s given himself a concussion or worse! Not much wrong, indeed! I sent for you over 30 minutes ago. What have you been doing that a 5 minute walk turned into half an hour?”

“Calm yourself, Nurse. “ His voice gentled, and she realized that someone must have told him about the telegram she’d received. Otherwise, he could have fired her right then and there. “If you feel it’s that serious, I’ll take a look, if only to ease your mind and keep your hysteria in check.” The doctor knelt by Ray’s head. “Now then, young man, what did you do?”

“Took a wrong step,” the boy named Ray, wincing at the thought of moving any more than necessary. Perhaps she had been right to keep him still.

“Mmm hmm, and what hurts?”

She scoffed. She’d just told him her preliminary diagnosis, and that he’d been complaining of his head hurting after a fall. Good Lord, this doctor was stupid as he was blind, she was sure of it.

“Not much, really. I think I only hit my head a bit, and my back’s a bit sore.”

“Alright, well, let’s see if anything’s broken then. Nurse, turn him over.”

She bristled at the use of her title. He’d been here for over seven years, same as she. Perhaps it was a little too much to ask for him to learn her name. Hell, even using her last name- using _Patrick’s_ last name for God’s sake- would be preferable to that condescending ‘nurse’.

“It would be nice, _Doctor_ , if once in a blue moon, you acknowledged that I have a name and wasn’t born wearing a nurse’s dress,” she answered back, placing a rude emphasis on the word Doctor.

The doctor glared at her over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses, his patience wearing thin despite the circumstances for he rudeness. “I don’t care what you name is, _Nurse,_ ” he snapped. “My job is not to spare your feelings. My job is to examine this young man and be sure that he’s not injured any further than a suspected concussion.”

She grit her teeth and resisted the urge to call him a variety of inappropriate names not suited to respectable company. Instead, she muttered a rude French song under her breath, continuing to hold Ray in a number of positions while the doctor went on with his examination. It gave her a grim satisfaction that the silly old man probably thought she was singing lullabies. She certainly hoped Ray had the good sense to keep quiet, only opening his mouth to answer the doctor’s questions.

“Well that’s it then,” she heard several minutes later as the doctor closed his bag. “Not as bad a concussion as you might have thought, but quite a nasty knock to the head. Just keep him out of the barn and in around the grounds for a couple of days and he’ll be fine.”

She bit her tongue until the doctor left, then patted Ray on the shoulder. “Let me check you once more,” she held her index finger up to his face. “Follow my finger,” she moved said digit from right to left and back again, then up toward the roof and back down toward the floor. “Good, he was right. Your brain isn’t broken. You can get up now.”

He did, thus allowing her to stand and brush the dirt and dust from her knees and dress. Once she was somewhat presentable, she moved to leave the barn and allow Ray to get back to work. Despite what the doctor had said about keeping him out of the barn and around the grounds, she knew and understood that a farm hand’s work was never done, never mind if they were ill or injured.

“What is it?”

She stopped, turning to face him.

“What’s what?”

“Your name,” he grinned.

Clenching her jaw, she finally let it slip.

“Roberta Lennox,” she answered. “But everyone calls me Jane.”

“Why do they call you Jane if your name is Roberta?”

“I don’t like it,” she reasoned. “So I’ve always gone by my second name.”

“Makes sense,” he shrugged. “In that case, nice to meet you Jane. I’m Ray, as I’ve said,” he offered her his hand.

She took it, and gripped harder than she meant.

Releasing him, she pleaded an overabundance of work to be done and excused herself.

He shuffled a little, looking nervous, then said 'Perhaps I'll see you later.'

For a moment the words didn't quite register. Then she panicked a little. Was Ray _interested_ in her? Not now, not now that her husband had died...

No, she told herself, you're overthinking things. Just - you need some sleep.

She replied in her most practical voice.

“Perhaps, but mind you don’t strain yourself. I’ll be back to check on you.”

Turning back toward the farmhouse and her many other patients, she smiled to herself. Knowing young men and to the same extent, farm hands, there was no such thing as not straining yourself.


	2. Prizes for Rotten Judgement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jane ponders selfishness and time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra special thanks to ButterflyGhost for the beta.

Once she returned from the barn, Jane found that it was the busiest day she had seen in a very long time. Not much often happened in the hospital as it was, but today seemed incredibly difficult and hurried. If someone needed a dressing changed one moment, someone else needed to be held after waking screaming from a night terror the next, and somehow she was the only one available to perform all these tasks. Of course, there were other nurses on the premises, but they had all gone off somewhere else, claiming the need for a break.

As with most things in the tiny hospital situated in the middle of nowhere, plans often went awry. With so many other people needing her help, she found she’d had no time to go back to the barn and see to Ray.

“Lennox!” she heard a bark from the nurses’ quarters as she changed the last of the bedclothes of the soldier in the far bed. It was strange that he’d been gone for so long, but no one had otherwise occupied the space. Everyone simply called it “Private X’s bed”. “Finish that up, then come have a cup of tea and a rest.”

Tea? Rest? She couldn’t have been happier if they had said she could pack herself off home. It always felt so strange, to be away from home, even if it wasn’t so far, but she’d been told she was far more use here than anywhere else at the moment.

Rolling the almost forgotten bedclothes into a ball and tossing them into a basket, she headed off to the nurses’ quarters, finding it very difficult to ignore the cries of the men who suffered so horribly from night terrors. They were horrible things, night terrors, but it wasn’t any wonder, when they’d been to Hell and back, and lived to tell the tale.

She shook her head and headed toward her new destination, she’d never been so thankful to sit in a chair and kick her shoes off. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“There has to be an end to this,” she muttered to herself. She’d been working at the hospital for over seven years. She’d seen the beginning of the war, the first casualties come through those doors, and the mess each death left behind and the terrible strain they took on everyone. As much as they’d been trained to carry on and help whoever needed it, it was never that easy. It was impossible for someone to sign a death certificate, console the man’s wife and family, leave the room, snap their fingers, and then everyone would pack up and go home, content that they’d done their best. While she understood that these men needed help, she didn’t think she was the one to provide it. These men needed something more than basic nursing; something she’d never been trained in. That is to say, she’d been trained as a nurse and was really very good at what she did, but she could only treat their bodily wounds and ills; she couldn’t do anything for their minds, if there was anything to be done at all.

Was it selfish, she thought, to want to go home?

Regardless of how she felt at the moment, perhaps the best thing for her was to rest. So, unable to argue with herself any longer, she set her teacup down, moved from the table to the pallet on the floor, stretched out, and laid down for a while.

She awoke some time later, finding herself in the dark. For all the conveniences of electric lights, whoever had built this hospital had decided that there was no purpose in installing said lights in a rest station, of all places. No, never a rest station, because that would make _sense!_

Then again, the Germans would have loved to have bombed out a hospital. And sometimes, having blackout curtains and shutting off all the lights wasn’t enough. A hospital was a high risk target, so when the sun went down they had no choice but to work in the dark...

In any case, there were always candles and matches for instances such as this. Fumbling for one by the table, she found one and struck a match. Once lit, it was much easier to see what she was doing.

She heard crying and screaming from the other room. Oh dear, that poor Private Fox. He’d come to them with horrible burns and bleeding after the hospital he’d been in had closed. The thing had been a ruin anyway, so far as she had heard. Even after so many weeks with them tending to his wounds and bandages, he wasn’t well enough to go home. His burns and the scar tissue that resulted from his injuries had disfigured him almost beyond recognition. He was completely blind, his legs almost useless due to broken bones and ill-mending. _At least he still had the use of his hands_ , she thought to herself, _for what it’s worth_. They could only make him comfortable, topping up his laudanum when they could so that he might be able to sleep.

Sleep didn’t come easily to anyone in this gloomy place, least of all the nurses. Two or three hours of sleep at a time seemed to be standard; anything more than that and they thought themselves lucky.

BONG!

Oh the church bell. That bloody nuisance of a church bell! What would they ring it for? No one here cared anymore; God had forgotten them.

Several more chimes let her know that it was 7:00, a bit later than she thought, but still a reasonable time. By her estimation, she’d had about an hour or so of sleep. Had she really only stopped at about 6:00 that evening? That meant she’d been on her feet for nearly eighteen hours straight.

Private Fox was still wailing, this time not from pain. Poor boy, he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, and he was the only one left from his regiment, from what records they had been able to obtain when he’d been brought to them. Many had given him up for dead. The doctor, on the other hand, had said he’d been lucky.

“There’s no such thing as lucky in this mess,” she muttered. She sat up and ran a hand down her face. Fuzzy though her mind was, she knew she still had to go and see whether Ray was alright. A farm hand’s work, much like a nurse’s, was never done. If he wasn’t careful, he’d do himself permanent damage. God damn them all to Hell, she wished she’d never taken the job in the first place.

A shrill scream pierced the still air.

Private Fox needed her.

* * *

 

Jane approached the young man’s bed while the doctor gave him another dose of laudanum. Locking eyes with the man, he gave her a curt nod, allowing her to take Private Fox’s hand.

The young man turned his head toward her, mouthing a silent “it hurts” in her direction.

“I know,” she whispered. His breathing was rapid and shallow, his arms shaking with the effort of holding onto her hand. With a sad look in her eye, she asked the doctor if there was anything more they could do.

“No, just sit with him. Talk to him. It’s not long now,” he clapped a hand on her shoulder and took his leave.

There was nothing more distressing than a man who had resigned himself to knowing he was going to die. By that point, they were not fighting the inevitable, and, if they were lucky, they were able to go quietly.

Somehow she knew this would not be the case.

Still holding Private Fox’s hand, she struggled to remember what the boy’s first name was. Was it William? Henry? John?

Terrence!

“Terrence,” she moved closer to the bed, letting go of his hand.

He whimpered at the loss of contact.

“Terrence, I’m still here, can you hear my voice?” she asked, sitting on the bed. “I’m still here. It’s Nurse Lennox,” she added. “You know me, right?”

He nodded, wincing as he did so.

“That’s good. I’m going to sit with you for a little while. Is that okay?”

Same response.

“Okay.” Just as she settled herself in, he screamed in pain, bolting himself upright. She caught him by the shoulders and lowered his head over her heart, whispering soft lullabies in his ear. “That’s it. I’ll hold you. It’s okay.”

He sobbed, the laudanum no longer working. The poor boy was close to dying, and he knew it.

“Mother?” he murmured.

This happened whenever a young man was about to die. They asked for their mothers, coughed, and died. More often than not, she’d had to talk to them as though she were their mother, telling them she loved them and would see them when they woke.

“Yes Terrence?” she whispered, rocking him back and forth.

“Mother…” he reached up, wanting to touch her cheek.

“Right here, Terrence,” she answered, bringing his hand to her cheek. “Can you feel my cheek? I’m right here.”

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed, shaking as he brought his hand down. “Sorry.”

“No, don’t be sorry,” she continued rocking him. “Don’t be sorry. I’m proud of you. So proud.”

She felt him stiffen against her sternum and let out a final breath.

Her shoulders quaked once, her eyes moist with tears. Kissing his temple, she maneuvered herself off the bed and laid him down. She brought her hand down over his eyes, closing them against the light of the candles.

BONG!

_Fuck you, church bell!_ She silently cursed, opening the window to let Terrence Fox’s soul go free.

Steadying herself, she left the room and went to find the doctor.

Knocking against the door frame, she waited until he peered over his glasses at her.

“Private Terrence Fox. Time of death: 19:57.”

He nodded, making a note. “Go have a break, Lennox. I’ll send someone else to move the body.”

She knew he was being considerate for no other reason than that he felt sorry for her. She knew that normally she would resent being a charity case. But for once, she couldn’t find the strength to argue with him.

* * *

 

She’d had enough. Over seven years in this hospital and another three in field hospitals, hadn’t she done her duty? Wasn’t ten years away from home enough? There was no one in Yorkshire keeping her here (not anymore at least), yet she couldn’t bring herself to leave.

Too many people needed her here.

But by that rationale, nurses were needed everywhere. She could pack herself off home and do the exact same thing.

She’d asked once a long time ago. She’d asked if she could go home. No, she was needed here. By all accounts, there was no chance of her leaving.

_Careful Jane_ , she thought to herself. _You don’t have time to think about that. You’ve got 15 minutes before you have…_

**SMACK!**

Looking up, breathless, she saw that she had run straight into Ray.

“Oh,” she swallowed, trying to compose herself. “How’s the head?”

“Fine,” he lifted her chin to see the tears she refused to let fall. He gave her a knowing look.

Without saying a word, she brushed her lips against his and moved to disappear.

He caught her arm, forcing her to look at him. Gently, he took her chin in his hand and kissed her once more.

It seemed that time had stopped. There was suddenly no death, no sickness, no nothing. His kiss was the only thing keeping her feet on the ground.

Her eyes popped wide, and she pulled herself away.

Hearing him inhale at the loss of contact, she put a finger to his lips.

“We can’t tell anyone about that,” she whispered.

He nodded dumbly, in such a state of shock that she had disappeared by the time he came to his senses.

* * *

 

_BONG!_

No matter how many times that God-forsaken bell rang out, she would cringe. There had to be someone there; yet that place seemed dark and deserted. Still, bells did not ring on their own. It was only logical that someone pulled the ropes.

Then again, no one cared anymore; least of all whoever decided to ring those bells and give her a headache _._

Jane ran as quickly as she could back to the hospital, mud and dirt soaking into her shoes and up onto the hem of her skirt. Things would be so much easier if she didn’t have emotions. What on _Earth_ had possessed her to kiss him? She was a nurse; he was her patient, something like that was strictly forbidden.

But he had not been a formal patient; just someone who had taken a fall and needed her help.

That didn’t matter in a place like this. There were no formal records; times; it was almost as though time did not matter.

It was then she caught her foot and went face first into the mud.

After a few moments of anger and rage, she brought herself up to her knees and wiped enough of the mud away to be able to see. Seeing no other alternative, she picked herself up and kept going.

_I’ve had enough_ , she thought to herself. _I’ve been here for too long. Ten years is long enough._

But she had learned long ago that wanting to leave and being able to do so were two very different things.


	3. In Search of Some Rest, In Search of a Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ray learns a little more about Jane, and an explosion is heard nearby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Currently an unbeta'd chapter, so all mistakes are mine.

The truth of the matter was that it had never been her intention to become a nurse. She’d never thought she had much of a talent for anything, really. Growing up in Yorkshire, she never really felt the need to learn a trade. There had been money in her family for years; indeed, her dowry had been substantial.

Her formative years had been spent in the care of nannies. Her favourite had been a young lady named Nina, who told her stories of the fairs in Blackpool. Acrobats, music, and carnival rides, candies and lights and all the things a little girl shouldn’t see and shouldn’t have were there. But the lights, oh you’d never see anything like it, Nina had insisted.

In the recesses of her mind, she swore she could hear Nina’s promise to take her there one day. Jane could still remember asking Nina everyday when they’d get to go.

“Not for a long while, my dear,” Nina would tell her. “Blackpool is not a place for two young ladies all alone.”

“But I want to go!” she could hear it in her own head. “Nina, when can we go? I want to see the elephants! Are there elephants?”

“Oh honey,” Nina had laughed. “When you’re older, we’ll go. I promise.”

That day never came, she groused to herself as she changed the sheets on the bed that Private Terrence Fox had previously occupied. She’d never been able to go, as Nina had promised her. Instead, she’d gotten herself shipped off to war.

“Blackpool, my eye!” she muttered as she filled the pot hanging over the fire with the soiled sheets and pillowcases and set to letting them boil with the washing powder. How had dreams of bright lights and feeding peanuts to the elephants managed to turn to washing bed sheets and fretting over kissing farm hands in a few moments of weakness?

“No, away with you!” she scolded herself, willing the image of Ray’s lips on her own to the back of her mind. Whatever had possessed her to do such a thing in the first place had to be avoided at all costs, regardless of how she felt about the incident, kissing, or Ray the farm hand for that matter. “Away with you, I do not have the time or the patience to deal with any of  _ that _ , thank you very much!”

“Lennox!”

She swore to God that she would march herself down the road to whatever office there was and change her name to something completely silly and unpronounceable if she had to hear her last name one more time.

“Yes?” she grit her teeth, trying to sound as pleasant as possible.

“There’s a letter here for you,” the head nurse, Bridges, held it out to her.

A letter? She felt her stomach drop into her feet. She never got letters, especially not since they were so far away from any sort of civilization. Frankly the only way they were still functioning was the monthly jaunt into some unknown village that had only started to rebuild itself. It was five miles down the road, not that it mattered much; she’d not been able to go in well over a year.

But, all bitter thoughts aside, she shook her head and tucked the letter into her apron. Letters from anonymous writers could wait; young men screaming in pain could not.

ooOoo

Ray set about his daily routine, his head not in any way worse for wear. He still had almost double the amount of work to do, with everyone else needing a break. What a funny idea, breaks. The only break he could remember having had been for food, and even then it wasn’t very long.

A long whinny and snort alerted him to a visitor. Looking up to see someone walking toward the paddock, he gave the mare’s rump a pat and walked around her to the fence.

“Well I wondered when you’d be back. Miss me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Ray,” she snapped.

“Someone’s got their knickers in a twist.”

“If you honestly believe you have any effect whatsoever on the state of my undergarments, you’ve got another think coming,” she spat. “And where do you get off, talking like that? I only came to see how your head was doing, but I see I was only wasting my time, of which I have very little. So, thank you, Ray, for being just as crude as anyone else I’ve ever encountered.”

“What others?”

“You’ve been here, what, seven years? Same as I have. Do you really think you’re going to be able to flatter me, or anyone, for that matter, using language like that?”

_ Had it really been seven years?  _ He wondered as he reached down and lobbed a crab apple over the fence.

“Why is seven years so important?”

“Because I’ve been here for seven years with you and three years in a field hospital before that instead of home with my husband. Besides, you farm hands are all coarse and crabby when it comes down to it,” Jane answered.

“Are we then?” he smirked, sticking a foot onto the first rung of the fence and launching himself over, coming to stand in front of her, apparently taking no notice of the fact that she’d mentioned a husband. “Then if I’m so coarse and crabby, tell me why I would have kissed you.”

“You know you didn’t have to do that. I tried to pull away as soon as it happened.” She drew in a breath to steady herself. “Besides, seven years here doing the same thing and never having a break or time alone to think and not seeing your family for well over ten years is cause to that know you’ve had enough, don’t you think?”

Ray bit his lip. “Well I can only speak for myself, Jane, but I agree. Ten years is a long time. And even longer for not seeing the people you love.”

She looked at him with tears starting to form in her eyes.

“But ten years away is better than being dead.”

“I wish I were,” she admitted.

“There’s nothing I can do about that,” he answered.

“No, I suppose not,” Jane agreed. “I don’t… I don’t really wish I were dead, it’s just… I’m tired. Ray, I’m so tired. I haven’t been home in years, I’m pretty sure my mother’s died and my father’s forgotten about me.”

“Fathers don’t forget about their kids,” Ray protested, as though he knew anything about it.

“They do if their only daughter ran off and married an Irishman,” she continued. “What good, properly bred English girl marries a lowly Mick pilot and leaves behind the family fortune, especially if he has no sons to settle it on?” Truth be told it wasn’t the first time in human history that such a thing had ever happened, but her father wasn’t about to believe that. “Furthermore, I just received word that my husband was shot down over the Channel… I haven’t even had the time to write and tell my mother-in-law that her son died; she’ll have to hear about it in a letter from his squadron! It'll kill her! Do you know how hard it is to know that if I ever  _ did _ get to go home, there’s no one left?”  

He stepped closer to her, placing a hand on and gripping her shoulder.

“Do you miss him, then?”

“I…” she stopped suddenly. “Of course I do. I love him. I still love him. He was supposed to come back home and we were supposed to be starting a family.” She stopped, suddenly aware of whom she was talking to and where they were. “Wait a minute, remind me why I’m talking to you?” she shrugged, breaking the grip he had on her shoulder.  “It’s not at all proper, and if I’m not back soon they’ll be wondering when I’ve disappeared to.”

“Wait a second, Jane,” he protested.

“I’m sorry to have burdened you with the knowledge that I’m not as strong as I should be,” she told him. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. Good bye.”

Grabbing hold of her elbow, he moved to stop her.

“Ray, let me go,” she demanded. “Now.”

“Not until you listen to me. “

“There’s nothing to listen to that I don't already know, Ray. I’ve just got to get on with it.”

“Grief is a really terrible thing, Jane,” he told her. “Keeping it to yourself will do nothing but cause you pain.”

“I don’t care,” Jane bit down on her lip. “I’m not important. Not now. The ones who are important are the men who are lying in the beds within my hospital ward…”

“Yes you are, you’re very important.”

“Oh? Well then, Sir Ray the All-Knowing, tell me how I am so very important,” there was a malice in her voice that she couldn’t quite explain. He’d done nothing to deserve her hatred. “I was not out there fighting the battles, I was not in the trenches moving their bodies, I was not…”

“No, you were not,” he agreed, snaking an arm around her waist. “You were here to bandage and heal them when they came to you bruised and broken. Without you, many of them would have died.”

“Many of them  _ have  _ died,” she corrected, realizing just how close he was, his calloused hands too rough, being able to feel them through her uniform. “I just had to help a man die, Ray. How many more? How many is too many? How long before I say enough?”

“You can’t stop people from dying,” Ray tried to reason. “You know that as well as anyone. People die all the time, that’s just the way of it.”

“So you’re saying I should just give up everything I’ve been trying to do for the past ten years? Because that’s what I’m hearing. I should just stop being a nurse and trying to save people, because we’re all going to die anyway, so we might as well just pick our poison?”

He shook his head.

“That’s not what I’m saying, and you damn well know it,” he answered, holding on to her wrist. “My point is only that that man dying was not your fault. You did not cause his injuries. The war did. The war killed him.”

“The war has been  _ going on _ for near enough seven years,” she argued, biting down on her lip to keep herself calm. “More and more are dying every day, and there’s very little I can do to save them.”

ooOoo

He woke slowly, his body stiff and sore. There was a distinct smell of turpentine and burning gasoline, quite an assault on the nasal passages if he did say so himself. His legs were lying to the left while his entire body screamed in protest at trying to move. Thrusting an arm out with a violence he did not know he possessed, he clawed at the dirt, trying to establish a grip on something tangible. Wait,  _ was  _ that dirt? It crumbled between his fingers, soft and wet. Yes. Good. He was lying in dirt. 

  
Pressing a hand into said dirt, he fostered an attempt to roll himself over. A bolt of pain shot up his arm, causing him to collapse back onto his stomach, knocking what little breath he still had out of him. What the hell had happened? And where his ears growing louder as he struggled to figure out where he was. He stumbled, only to find himself face to face with said plane. Had he jumped out, not remembering having done so? Didn’t matter really, the bloody thing was on fire, acrid smoke pouring from all orifices of the plane, the thing falling apart bit by bit.

The sound of metal and plastic exploding was deafening, and it was the last thing he heard before the world disappeared.


End file.
